We Are Everywhere – The Cliffhanger Collection

May 22 to September 12, 2021 I Landesgalerie Niederösterreich

The exhibition We Are Everywhere tells the story of the Cliffhanger project up to its realization in Lower Austria’s Ötschergräben region, but places its focus on the genre of the selfie, which in quantitative terms now represents the largest pictorial genre of all time.

Steinbrener/Dempf & Huber invite visitors on an artistic parcourse that allows us to become an active part of the exhibition. The installations offer the opportunity to embark on a journey around the world via selfies. Abysses of tourism such as big-game hunting and mass destinations thus lead us into the borderline areas of cultural appropriation and result in an extremely ambivalent conception of “homeland.” Michel Houellebecq, Ernst Jandl and Jacques Tati are quoted; the obligatory selfie smile becomes a caricature of itself, for any semblance of distance is lost, with one becoming part of the pictorial narrative oneself.

We Are Everywhere is also the title of the 1971 cult book by the American Yippie author and political activist Jerry Rubin, who wanted to frighten middle-class society with the omnipresence of his movement.